American Balls (2006)

Balls

The cover to "American Balls" looks like an "American Pie" movie; it has that title in a box thing over a group of characters. It even mentions "American Pie" and also "Clerks" which is fair enough, it is obvious that the writers and director intentionally went out of the way to mimic and combine these two movies. Sadly the end result is dull and not the barrel of laughs that the combination of those two movies could be.

Jen (Nikki Stanzione) will do anything to please her ex-boyfriend Zack (Drew Wicks) which is why she ends up in a threesome with Tara (Nicole Rayburn) who works with them down at the Billiards shop which Zack owns. The thing is that Zack believes that their relationship is best kept to just friendship but as he discusses what happened with his colleagues he begins to question whether that is right or maybe Jen is in fact his dream girl.

So as I said "American Balls" mentions "American Pie" and "Clerks" and with the cover looking very "American Pie" like I was hoping it would be more Pie than Clerks. Unfortunately it isn't and ends up one of those movies which is more about the conversations between people working in a shop than anything else. There are some scenes of "American Pie" style comedy, the opening scene with a threesome followed quickly by a toilet scene has a slight comedy feel but it ends up short on this sort of laugh.

Now I guess those who enjoyed "Clerks" won't mind this and will enjoy all the conversational stuff. But the trouble is that there is no energy or conviction to any of this and so it becomes monotonous, watching people talk about things which end up not overly interesting. Even when occasionally dips back into "American Pie" territory it continues to struggle because it ends up feeling at odds with all the conversation stuff.

Maybe part of the trouble is that whilst we have some attractive actors their ability to be interesting is lacking. It makes it feel extremely amateur even more amateur than it probably intended to be.

What this all boils down to is that "American Balls" might appeal to those who really enjoyed "Clerks" but those attracted by the "American Pie" reference are going to be heavily disappointed.